AP® English Literature and Composition review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/lit/units/7/7-5)
Unit 7 · Topic 7.5
7.5 Multiple narrators and conflicting accounts
Some stories are told by more than one narrator. Each narrator may know things the others don't, and their accounts can even contradict each other. Your job is to compare the versions and ask what the gaps and disagreements reveal about the narrators and the story's meaning.
Key terms
- multiple narrators
- point of view
- frame story
- contradictory accounts
- limited knowledge
Why use more than one narrator?
A single narrator gives you one view. Several narrators give you several, and the story's meaning often lies in how they fit together or clash. Multiple narrators can fill in knowledge one narrator lacks, show the same event from opposite sides, or leave you unable to decide which version is true.
Frame stories are a common version. An outer narrator passes along a story told by someone else, who may in turn quote another speaker. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein nests three narrators: the explorer Walton writes letters containing Victor Frankenstein's story, which contains the creature's own account. Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights passes most of its story through the housekeeper Nelly Dean to the tenant Lockwood.
Famous examples you can name
Some well-known works built on conflicting accounts are still under copyright, or are read in English in copyrighted translations, so you'll see them named here but not quoted. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's story "In a Grove" (1922) gives several contradictory testimonies about a killing, including one from the dead man speaking through a medium, and never says which is true. William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" (1930) is told by an unnamed "we," the voice of a whole town. Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying (1930) switches among fifteen narrators.
How to compare accounts
- Who knows what? List what each narrator saw and what they only heard about.
- Where do they agree? Shared details are probably reliable.
- Where do they disagree? Ask what each narrator gains from their version.
- What does no one say? A gap that all narrators leave open is often the story's central mystery.
- Why this order? The account you read last often has the most power to reshape the others.
Don't forget the outer narrator
In a frame story, the narrator who passes the story along has a perspective too. Walton, the explorer in Frankenstein, is an ambitious man who admires Victor, so he may be inclined to accept Victor's version of events. Lockwood in Wuthering Heights is a stranger who misjudges almost everyone. Ask how the person relaying the story might shape it, even if they mostly just listen.
What the disagreement means
Don't treat conflicting accounts as a puzzle with one right answer. Sometimes the point is that truth depends on perspective, or that people tell stories to protect themselves. A good essay explains what the contradictions reveal: about the narrators, about the community, or about how hard it is to know what really happened.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Comparing two accounts of one event
Practice passage (written for this practice set). Narrator 1, the shopkeeper: "The boy came in, looked around nervously, and slipped out without paying for the bread. I've seen his kind before." Narrator 2, the boy's sister: "My brother left money on the counter by the door, like always, because Mr. Hale never looks up from his newspaper. He came home shaking because Mr. Hale had shouted after him." Explain what the conflicting accounts suggest.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: List what each narrator actually saw. The shopkeeper saw the boy leave; he says nothing about the counter. The sister wasn't there; she reports what her brother told her.
- Step 2: Find the conflict: did the boy pay or not? Neither account can settle it completely.
- Step 3: Look for bias: "I've seen his kind before" shows the shopkeeper judged the boy before anything happened. The sister naturally trusts her brother.
- Step 4: Say what the disagreement reveals rather than picking a winner.
Answer: Sample answer: The two accounts don't settle whether the boy paid, but they do show how a judgment gets made. The shopkeeper's version rests on what he expected ("I've seen his kind before") rather than on anything he checked, while the sister's version, though secondhand, supplies a concrete detail he never mentions: the money on the counter by the door. Placed side by side, the accounts suggest that the real subject is not the bread but prejudice, and how a person in authority can turn suspicion into fact.
Common mistakes
- Trying to decide which narrator is "right" when the story deliberately leaves it open.
- Forgetting to ask what each narrator has at stake in their version.
- Treating secondhand reports as eyewitness accounts. Check how each narrator knows what they know.
On the exam
- Multiple-choice questions may ask how a second narrator's account changes your view of the first, or what a detail reveals about a narrator's limited knowledge.
- In essays, explaining why accounts conflict, not just that they do, is the kind of complexity that can earn the sophistication point.
Connected topics
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Check yourself
4 questions on 7.5 Multiple narrators and conflicting accounts. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Mark Twain, "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865), as printed in Sketches New and Old (1875). The opening (paragraphs 1–4, ending with the start of Simon Wheeler's tale) and the ending (paragraphs 5–9); the rest of Wheeler's long tale about Jim Smiley is left out between them.
The passage is structured as a frame story in which
In paragraph 1, the narrator’s “lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth” suggests that
The contrast between the language of paragraphs 1–3 and the language of paragraph 4 chiefly serves to
According to paragraph 3, Wheeler differs from the narrator in that Wheeler
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